February 9, 2007
Growing Up in Central Oregon: Livestock
This is part of an ongoing series of articles that I'm writing on Central Oregon and growing up here; you can view the introduction here and the series as a whole here.
Living relatively self-sufficiently on five acres, we always had some livestock. For all intents and purposes, we had a farm, but it was more of a small family farm than the big operations I usually think of when I hear the term (with cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc.).
At any given time our livestock generally consisted of one milk cow and a coop full of chickens. Along the way we tried out different animals, but this was the general combination that held.
June 11, 2006
Pictures of the cistern
This post is really to supplement my Water in the Desert post from yesterday; I wanted to include some pictures of the cistern we used to play on, because that was one of my favorite parts from that post. So while we were out at my parents' place today, I snapped a few pictures.
Here's a view of the thing. The concrete's a little worse for the wear after 20+ years, but you can see it's shaped like a box, and has those weird steel blade-looking things sticking out of it. Like rebar, only sharper. And sideways. Plus, you can get a sense of its height; I was standing on an elevated spot, and the top was still over my head a bit, and I'm six feet tall.
Holding the camera over my head and shooting blindly... here's the top of the cistern. Nice and flat. The pumphouse is adjoining; from the cistern you could wander around on top the pumphouse. That wasn't as much fun though.
Nice view along the side, closeup on the blade thingy. Yes, we would climb on those. They're what, maybe an eighth of an inch thick.
June 10, 2006
Growing Up in Central Oregon: Water in the Desert
This is part of an ongoing series of articles that I'm writing on Central Oregon and growing up here; you can view the introduction here.
Growing up on the desert, water takes on a special, almost symbolic, significance. You are constantly surrounded by sand, sagebrush, juniper trees, dry vegetation like bunchgrass and cheat grass, all of it broken up by undulating mounds or ridges of dark lava rock... and not a drop of water in sight.
...I was going to write some pithy metaphor about how the mind grows to reflect the desert environment around it and consequently understands water to be as precious as it is to the ecosystem, but you know what? I'm not that high-fallutin'.
April 28, 2006
Growing Up in Central Oregon: Introduction
This is a series I've been mulling over for a while now and even at one point promised Simone I would write. I've been wanting to write it partly because I think the perspective of growing up in rural Central Oregon is unique, and partly because I think there's some good stories to tell. So bear with me.
First off: an introduction. The background. I'm laying the groundwork and setting the stage...
